


bolt of blue

by ichinoseharu (rinsousukes)



Category: Free!
Genre: 30 Days of Rin, M/M, POV Alternating, Polyamorous relationship, Slow Build (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3152351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinsousukes/pseuds/ichinoseharu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It surprises Sousuke a little, how well he can read Nanase when it comes to his interactions with Rin, even though this is the first time they’ve been put in such a situation. Birds of a feather flock together, he thinks wryly, but then stubbornly tamps down on the pulse of solidarity that Nanase’s arm pressed to his, invokes within him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bolt of blue

Sousuke’s fingers clench and unclench around the frayed A4 folder (it’s a crumpled mess now, testament to his nerves during the long bus ride from Hiro’s uni hall to Nippon U) and he thinks to himself that he isn’t sure about this.

He hadn’t been sure about it when he’d scribbled on the application form in messy, inky letters and slotted it into the postbox; he definitely hadn’t been sure when two weeks later, he’d ripped open the pristine white envelope, with Nippon U’s seal stamped on it on both corners (by mistake) jarring and bright, to find an overtly formal acceptance letter addressed to one Yamazaki Sousuke.

And he isn’t sure now, as he crosses the road from where he’d alighted and then jogs towards the dreary looking driveway. His nerves get the better of him and he forgets to look out for vehicles in the open road: the small, black hatchback swerves neatly out of the way and the driver, a middle-aged office-worker type, sticks his head out of the window as he passes by Sousuke and makes a garbled, angry sound.

Sousuke just schools his expression into something remotely contrite and holds up a palm in apology. Not a good start by any means.

He’d hesitated long enough in making his university choices - nearly missed the deadline for application despite Ryo-sensei’s prodding and earnest concern. Ma had been a tough one to dodge too, especially after his batch had cleared out of the Samezuka dorms and he’d holed himself back up in his tiny room (unchanged, except for the conspicuous absence of all his trophies).

She’d formed a habit of cornering him every evening and “enquiring” about his future plans. He’d begun to eat dinner outside with Kisumi (and Hayato too, occasionally) every other day just to avoid her thorough interrogations and it's testament to how much it had started to get to him, that he’d rather spend an hour and a half listening to  _Kisumi’s_ inane blathering than get back to the comfort of his room.

If he’s being honest though, all that barely holds a candle to the ball of simultaneous unease and anticipation that festers and then grows and grows inside of him whenever he’s due for a Skype call with Rin. Funny how even when he’s 4860 miles away (Sousuke will never admit to googling that, his hand had just slipped, really), Rin’s light is as bright as it has ever been, warming the inside of his eyelids when he sleeps and wrapping around his tired limbs like a salve.

Rin is a scabbed wound and everything should be alright now, should be okay, but at times, Sousuke can’t help but peel away at the freshly formed tissue just to make himself remember. He’s not bitter, but he still hurts sometimes when no one’s looking, when his shoulder twinges painfully and he rolls over in bed and bites his lip viciously.

After all, Sousuke should know more than anyone, how and why words can mean everything and yet do nothing at all. “I’ll wait”, Rin had said, that painfully familiar, determined glint in his eye and Sousuke had wanted to believe him then; he still wants to now. But there’re dreams, and then there’s real life, and he’s fooled himself for long enough.

He misses Rin. But that feeling has been a constant for most of his life, so he doesn’t dwell too much on it now, just focuses on moving forward and making the best of what’s left for him. It’s an alternative, the lifelong sports therapy course that he’s chosen to take up, only second-best, but he thinks that he could grow to like, and maybe even love it. A little voice inside his head sometimes whispers that it’s because it’s the only thing left for him to do now, but he shoves it away insistently. It’s a  _choice_.

Rin is his best friend and it’s supposed to be uncomplicated and easy between the two of them. But the stilted conversations and gazes heavy with simultaneous truths and untruths has taken a toll on their relationship. Had that been the product of their five-year absence from each other’s lives? He’s not sure, but what he knows is that the way Rin’s smile (bright as the fallen snow) makes his pulse pick up and his palms itch with the urge to do  _something_ : it’s not something he’d felt when he’d been nine. Or even when he’d been sixteen, struggling with the inevitable end to all the dreams that had  _mattered_.

The fine, wispy hairs littering the nape of Rin’s neck and the taut, muscled curve of his forearm stand out in technicolour to Sousuke now and it’s more than confusing: it’s nerve-wracking because sometimes when Rin had turned to him with a “What do you feel like eating today?”, Sousuke’s tongue had suddenly felt too heavy in his mouth and when Rin’s face, backlit by the cheap fluorescent lights in his Sydney dorm room, appears on his Skype screen, Sousuke’s heart beats like a wet, ex-tempo drum.

Sousuke doesn’t want to get too deep into the confusing mess of feelings, and he’d been hoping that the renewed distance would silence that pesky little voice inside of his head, telling him to face Rin and accept that something. That something that he neither wants to label nor contemplate any further.

He approaches an older man clad in dark overalls with the words ‘Nippon University’ emblazoned in bright red letters across his sleeve, and asks him for directions to the auditorium, where the Dean’s Welcome Ceremony is going to be held at 9 sharp. The man just disinterestedly points him in the direction of the twin gray concrete buildings and tells him to follow the other students.

Sousuke just then notices that a crowd is beginning to mill at the driveway. Freshmen just like him, by the looks of it, all bright eyes and trembling forms, and they all look so happy to be here that Sousuke feels a twang in his chest. He adjusts his sling bag and trails behind a trio of tiny, chattering girls, all ready for the fresh start that he’s never really wanted.

 

-

 

Haruka’s eyes haven’t left the pool even once in the entirety of the fifteen minutes that his Theory Module Instructor, a young-ish looking guy whose tummy and arms have just started to soften with age and neglect, has been going on and on about classroom guidelines. Haruka’s first thought had been that this wasn’t a classroom, so why did those rules even apply? Pools weren’t classrooms, were they?

He’s since then moved on to thinking about far more useful things, like how there’s a metallic looking roof stretching out over the indoor poolhouse and how the sunlight streaming through the high windows reflects an almost silvery sheen onto the surface of the pool water. It’s beautiful. Haruka’s never had an indoor pool to call his own in elementary, middle or high school (Not counting Samezuka, because Rin would never let him live it down if he admits that that private, echoing dome in Samezuka had almost become a second home to him).

His lips twitch a little in amusement though, when he thinks about how Rin will react when he tells him about the size of this place and how beautiful the water looks, how warm it feels lapping against his feet and crawling into the spaces between his sore toes. He’d probably scoff and tell Haruka that this was all old news to him, that he’s seen better places and swam in far more beautiful waters. He’d probably be right too, but Haruka just likes to be contrary sometimes when it comes to Rin.

It’s worth it to watch the way his eyebrows dip in consternation and his mouth twists into an unhappy moue, like he wants to say something cutting, but then thinks better of it.

He doesn’t even realize that he’s inched forward and away from his classmates and dipped just his big toe into the pool until his instructor clears his throat roughly and motions him back with a rough tilt of his head. His eyes are flat and irritated and Haruka wants to try his luck (vaguely realizes that Makoto has let him have his way too much when it came to this issue) but a following, sharp bark of “Oi, you!” sends him dragging his feet back into the crowd of first-years, who’re whispering among themselves and staring a little peculiarly at him.

‘What’s the matter?’ Haruka wants to ask them. ‘Isn’t the water calling to you too?’

With his toes out of the water and his gaze directed back to the mesmerizing ripples on the pool surface, his thoughts inevitably turn back to Rin. Rin is in Australia. ‘Sydney’, he’d reminded Haruka, with excited eyes and that recurring lift in the corner of his mouth, like he’d barely been able to contain his excitement but didn’t want to come off as too excited or juvenile about it. Haruka remembers Sydney. Sydney had been too big and beautiful, suffocating and liberating at the same time. It’d been a city of contradictions, from the quiet, windy corners of its parks to the shamelessly bright and gaudy gleam of the Opera House. Haruka had only been there for three days, but he thinks he misses it.

Sydney is larger than life and full of youthful dreams and beautiful. It suits Rin perfectly. Rin is beautiful. And Rin is a person with the loftiest dreams, someone who possesses the tremendous grit to follow them till the very end.

Rin had told Haruka on a whim, seated on the stone benches, with the soft whooshing of the fountains behind them, that he’d always admired him.

But Haruka had thought then that Rin had always been fluid and beautiful to him; something entirely out of this world in all his smooth strokes and liquid passion. Almost like water. His eyes had tracked the soft sway of Rin’s messy bangs in the breeze, the way the arms of his hoodie swallowed all but the tip of his pinky (in his attempt to stay warm) and thought that no,  _I’m driven forward by you, Rin. It’s always been you._

Rin’s far away now. He’s nearly 5000 miles and an entire expanse of ocean away (not that that’d stop Haruka if he really wanted to see him at any moment), Makoto had told him those numbers one day over Yakiniku one night, and Haruka had blinked at him confusedly until Makoto laughed that gentle, tinkling laugh of his and told him that it was considered romantic, knowing things like that. Haruka’s confusion had only grown. Romantic? But he and Rin weren’t like that.

Rin is Haruka’s only rival, one of his closest friends, and he thinks he can see a world of possibilities open up when Rin turns his liquid red gaze on him and beckons to him with a wave of his hand (like he has a thousand times over in Haruka’s most lucid dreams). But Rin isn’t his.. his  _lover_. He’d told Makoto that and Makoto had smiled and murmured something under his breath, thinking that it’d be too soft for Haruka to catch. But Haruka has keen ears and he’s always known when someone isn’t telling him something important.

“Not yet” was what Makoto had said, and he’d looked so sure of himself, so uncomplicatedly happy for Haruka that Haruka had dragged his stool closer to Makoto’s and pressed himself to the line of his warm, solid arm until Makoto had softened against him like he always had.

Haruka thinks that Makoto knows him better than anyone else does, understands him more than even Haruka understands himself sometimes, and the thought is a little scary but a lot reassuring. Makoto is Haruka’s safe place, and it’d scared him to think about that one constant wobbling on its axis and starting to move away, but he realizes now that it’s for the better. Haruka and Makoto are growing up, but not growing apart. Never that.

Besides, he has something of his own now. He wants to swim, wants to swim until he feels like he can’t swim anymore and Haruka is finally sure now that this is where he’s supposed to be, sure that this is where he’s going to go.

And he wants Rin to be there with him when he gets there. Or rather, he trusts that Rin will be standing right there with him, creating ripples in the water in the lane beside him where Haru will be able to look from the corner of his eye and watch him powering forward, like the world is his in that very moment and everyone else (except Haruka) is powerless to stop him from seizing it.

 

-

 

The first time Sousuke catches a glimpse of hair so black that it shines blue under the rays of light creeping into the cafeteria, it’s a week after he’s enrolled into Nippon U. It happens when Sousuke’s ambling into the cafeteria with a wet-behind-the-ears and very eager kid who ironically, had introduced himself to Sousuke as ‘Aizawa Rin’. Sousuke remembers granting himself a moment to indulge in a little self-pity; and contemplate if fate had been playing one hell of a cosmic joke on him for the past few years.

The kid is tolerable though, if the polar opposite of his namesake: irritatingly bubbly for one, but also eager to learn and fairly competent at labs and tutorials. Sousuke still has to ask him to shut up and let him eat in peace now and then, but they have three more years to work on that.

The moment he spots Nanase is also the moment Nanase spots him, because Nanase’s taken one of the booths by the window that faces the entrance of the cafeteria. It gives him a clear view of Sousuke, where he’s now stood completely still, tense and more than a little stunned. Aizawa, all measly one hundred and thirty odd pounds of him, tries to usher him forward with a grip on his forearm, but Sousuke just shakes him off and meets Nanase’s characteristic unfathomable gaze head on.

This is the last place he’d expected to see Nanase. Well, that one’s a bit of an exaggeration but Sousuke had honestly never imagined meeting the one person whom he had little desire to see in the place that he’d gone to escape from everything.

No one can accuse Sousuke of being a coward though, so he just gestures to Aizawa with a quick motion and strides towards where Nanase is holding his gaze steadily, all the while nibbling on a piece of bread, still half-wrapped in clear plastic. He stops in front of the booth; it's only occupied by Nanase (where is his keeper anyway, Sousuke wonders idly, the one with eyes brown and bright like a cow’s?).

“Yamazaki.”

Shit. He’d meant to get the first word in, but Nanase just continues inspecting him with those inscrutable eyes, gaze straying not even once to a bewildered Aizawa who’s looking between the two of them for any sort of introduction.

“Nanase.” He gets out, keeping any and all hints of uneasiness and surprise out of his voice. He still doesn’t know where he stands with Nanase now, but he’s made enough peace with both himself and Rin to admit that he’d gotten carried away with confronting Nanase. Like every single time before.

It’s just that Nanase had reminded him of everything that he’d lost, everything that he could have had and everything that was being wasted on someone who hadn’t appreciated the value of it. But this Nanase is different, and so is Sousuke, and so Sousuke makes a split-second decision and decides that he’ll leave the hatchet where it’s meant to be. Buried ten feet under the ground.

He slides into the booth opposite Nanase, tossing the standard cafeteria bento that he’d grabbed on his way in onto the sleek table top. And belatedly remembers to budge over so that Aizawa has space to squeeze in beside him.

There’s honest curiosity tinged with a little surprise in Nanase’s eyes now, as if he hadn’t expected Sousuke to do that, and he pauses mid-bite. Sousuke remembers him looking that way six years ago, when Sousuke had turned up on his porch unexpectedly, but there’s a lot less animosity in his gaze now, and the fire has mellowed down. The random flash of memory makes him a little more amiable, makes him remember that Nanase is someone from  _home_ , Sousuke’s home, in more ways than one.

“So. What brings you here, Nanase?”

Nanase pauses and slots his half-eaten bun back into its wrapper before sliding it onto the table between them.

“Theory class on Wednesdays and Fridays. The rest of my training is up over at Sendagaya, at the Metropolitan.”

He pauses and shifts a little uneasily, eyes flickering back to Sousuke’s. It comforts Sousuke just that little bit to realize that Nanase too, is out of his element (quite literally, in a sense).

“What about you, Yamazaki?”

“Lifelong sports.” A little pause. And then Sousuke clarifies: “Here.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

Their monosyllabic end to the conversation seems to ignite the curiosity of Aizawa, who’s been watching them keenly, all the while digging into his own bento.

“So you guys were buddies back in, where was it? Sano?”

“No!” Nanase offers quickly, just as Sousuke himself answers, and there’s a hilarious kind of harmony in the way their exclamations are shaded by just a tinge of defensiveness.

Aizawa chuckles.

“Ahh, so it’s like that.” He says prudently, and then the silence returns; it’s more than a little awkward this time.

It’s loaded with all the things Sousuke wants to say, should say, and stretches on by way of Nanase’s own taciturnity. After all, it all comes back to one thing with the two of them. It’s like the proverbial pink (red rather) elephant in the room, and it’s making everything stilted and uncomfortable, more so than it had ever been.

“I was wrong after all, huh Nanase.” He speaks before he can think better of it, and then wishes he could swallow his words, because they sound resigned even to his own ears.

“Hm?” Nanase looks wary, as if he's expecting Sousuke to spring something on him again.

“ _There’s no talent that can surpass hard work._ ” Sousuke pauses and watches realization dawn in Nanase’s eyes. Realization and something else. Pity? No, not that. Nanase would never pity him, that’s the one thing Sousuke is grateful to him for. The shadows in his dark eyes hint at understanding more than anything else, and Sousuke feels a little sorry for himself, but a little relieved at the same time that he doesn't have to _pretend_ with Nanase.

“No. You weren’t wrong, Yamazaki. It isn’t my talent that’s gotten me here.”  _And neither was it your lack of talent that was your undoing_ , goes unspoken.

Nanase continues, after watching Sousuke intently and finding something in his expression.

“It’s because of my friends that I’m here now. My friends who taught me to work hard. And..“ He pauses, his glance hesitant and more open than Sousuke's ever seen it.

“And what?”

“And you were right, Yamazaki.”

Sousuke’s a little taken aback by that, but he nods back at Nanase anyway and spares him the agony of explaining his flyaway comment. And then, because he’s feeling particularly magnanimous today, decides to extend another olive branch.

“For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to pick on you.” He offers, hoping that this will be enough of an apology for the words that he’s regretted saying, for the way Nanase’s eyes still hold a spark of caution whenever Sousuke’s around.

Nanase nods back at him, and his eyes are less shuttered now. If he looks closely enough, Sousuke can almost make out an amiable tilt to the corner of his lips. It changes his face completely, makes him look less distant and much younger.

Aizawa’s calf brushes his under the table as he shifts restlessly and it’s only then that Sousuke realizes that he’s completely forgotten to introduce him to Nanase. He clears his throat and pats Aizawa’s back.

“Nanase, this is Aizawa. He’s in almost all of my classes.”

Nanase’s gaze turns to Aizawa for the first time, and he disinterestedly skims over him, in all his messy-haired, doe-eyed glory. Nanase likely hadn’t even noticed his presence before this.

“ _Nice to meet you. I’m Haruka Nanase._ ”

Aizawa freezes beside him. Sousuke himself goes mum in surprise and it’s too late now to choke back the bark of laughter that Nanase’s horribly accented, deadpan English elicits from him.

“Nanase!” He exclaims, voice trembling with ill-concealed humour, but Nanase just blinks at him, as if to say ‘What?’. The little twinkle in his eye gives him away. Sousuke’s hilarity only increases with that.

“What the hell was that, Nanase?” His lips are still twitching uncontrollably, and Aizawa brows are drawing down in bewilderment.

“English.” Nanase replies, swiping his bun off the table. Sousuke has no doubt that it’s Rin’s doing. He wonders if Rin knows the kind of misfortune he’s managed to inflict on the world by teaching Nanase those few flyaway words.

Aizawa shoots Sousuke a curious, amused glance and then picks up where they left off.

“Nice to meet you, Nanase-kun. I’m Aizawa Rin.”

Sousuke has to suppress his laughter again at how quickly Nanase’s head snaps back up at that. His blue eyes are alight with sudden interest and he inspects Aizawa again, this time a little more thoroughly.

When he finishes and turns a half-disbelieving and half-knowing glance to Sousuke, Sousuke hastens to defend himself.

“Before you say anything annoying, no, I didn’t know either. I only bothered to ask him for his given name two days after I met him.”

“Sure.” Nanase says, but he sounds anything but that and Sousuke tries to be irritated, but just ends up even more amused instead. Nanase surely couldn’t think that he had a habit of honing in on people called Rin.

“Really, Nanase.”

“Rin would love to hear about this.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Rin would be flattered, don’t worry, Yamazaki.”

Sousuke glares at him, but it hardly works, because Nanase just holds his annoyed gaze with a cool, amused one of his own and continues chewing leisurely. Sousuke just sighs and lets up.

“Rin will be writing properly to us this time.” He offers, partly to draw attention away from the topic at discussion.

He’s sure that the almost-fond expression on Nanase’s face is a reflection of his own.

“You’re going to bring more letters?” Nanase asks, voice laden with the barest hint of humour, and Sousuke just snorts at him and shakes his head.

“No, you get yours and I get mine, Nanase, no exchanges this time.”

Nanase smirks a little (he’s capable of more than that annoyingly blank face and the occasional scowl, Sousuke remembers from all those years ago).

"Rin really gets under your skin, huh?” Sousuke doesn’t know where all this is coming from, but he has a niggling feeling that Nanase is the only one who’ll understand what exactly he’s saying, what he means, when he talks about Rin.

“Rin has always been like that.” Nanase agrees and they both pretend not to notice the tiny smiles lifting the corners of their lips. There’s a far-away look in Nanase’s eyes, like he’s remembering something about Rin.

Sousuke knows, because he too, is overcome with a memory of Rin in third grade, circling his desk a dozen times and squeezing in beside him during lunch every day. Chattering to him about swimming, pleading with Sousuke to join Sano SC with him and learn fly. Sousuke had tried to keep his resolve, but it’d inevitably been worn thin by the earnestness of Rin’s feelings, the singular drive in his shiny boy eyes, and mostly, the way he’d sounded so sure of not only himself, but also Sousuke.

As if, if Rin willed it hard enough, the tides of the world would turn their way. As if the both of them were something more than scrawny nine year olds with too much ambition and too little opportunities.

A tap on his shoulder brings him back to the present and he pries open his bento box before turning to face Aizawa questioningly.

Aizawa looks between Nanase and him with a knowing expression.

“Is that why you weren’t friends before then? Love rival issues?”

Nanase’s eyes widen and Sousuke has to hurriedly swallow the half-chewed pork that he’d stuffed into his mouth.

“Lov- What the hell are you going on about, Aizawa?”

Aizawa’s smirking now.

“No need to play coy, Yamazaki-kun. Your girlfriend, Rin. She must really be something.”

 Sousuke glares at him and goes to meet Nanase’s eyes, but Aizawa cuts in before he can.

“That,” He gestures between Sousuke and Nanase with a thumb. “It never really works out though, Yamazaki-kun, Nanase-kun. There’s always one person who ends up getting left behind in the end.” He levels a meaningful look at Sousuke first and then Nanase. “But I’m sure you already knew that.”

That strikes a chord somewhere deep inside of Sousuke and his chest feels cramped and uneasy with Aizawa’s casual words. He looks up and manages to meet Nanase’s eyes this time, and they’re as murky as his own must look. He swallows dryly and wonders which one of them is wrong.

He wants to tell Aizawa that it’s different with them, because in a way, the both of them had gotten left behind without Rin ever meaning to do it. But that’s just who Rin is and Sousuke wouldn’t love him if he were any other way.

Rin is a hurricane of drive and affection, pulling everyone around him into the orbit of his friendship, and Sousuke (and Nanase too) are just houses of cards, left to piece themselves back together in the wake of his storm.

Nanase looks straight at Aizawa, expression blank again.

“Rin doesn’t have to choose between Yamazaki and I. No one is left behind.” He sounds unsure of himself though, and the uneasiness brewing in Sousuke’s chest takes liquid form.

Aizawa looks taken aback, but a new understanding dawns in his eyes and he nods.

“I see.”

The mood is broken when he smiles deviously at them. “Introduce me to her sometime.”

“Rin’s in Australia, Aizawa, so that’s a no.” Sousuke snorts and tries to ignore the cagey feeling hounding him, as he contemplates Aizawa’s serious words and then Nanase’s reply to them.

He meets Nanase’s glance silently, asking without words if they’ve let this go on for long enough. Nanase just nods at him. Before he can open his mouth and let Aizawa in on a very important detail about Rin, namely his gender, Aizawa cuts in again.

“That’s a pity. She must really be something to have two guys like you in love with her.”

Sousuke can feel his fingers tightening on the cheap wooden chopsticks and when he looks up, he notices that Nanase too has frozen up. He files that away for future contemplation, but for now, his mind races at one hundred and twenty miles an hour, trying to come up with plausible denials or sarcasm or anything really, to throw Aizawa off his game.

“Rin isn’t a girl.” Nanase solves his problem for him.

“That’s right, Aizawa. Get those silly thoughts out of your head. Rin is our friend.”

Aizawa looks a touch confused but also like he’s on the verge of some kind of epiphany. Sousuke doesn’t care much for that (or the intrusive questions that're bound to follow) so he quickly reaches over and grabs a sizeable chunk of tonkatsu from his bento. It does the trick.

“Yamazaki-kun! I’m a growing boy, you can’t just do that!”

“Shut up and eat the rest. Before I do.”

When Aizawa’s attention is back to his bento (he’s pouting, the momentary knowing sharpness in his eyes dulled down to his usual guilelessness), Sousuke sends a tight little smile Nanase’s way. Nanase’s eyes are unreadable again and he looks like he’s searching for something in Sousuke’s expression. He must have found whatever he was looking for, because he just nods back at him and resumes eating. With a lot less gusto.

 

-

 

It somehow becomes a routine for Haruka, without him even realizing it. His coach works them hard and puts them away wet four days a week and the other three, they have their own regimens and work-out routines to follow, so Haruka doesn’t care much for the frivolous conversations about girls and potential haunts for karaoke, that the other boys in his batch engage in frequently.

Instead, after theory lessons are over at the Nippon U campus on Wednesdays and Fridays, he finds himself a corner booth in their small-ish cafeteria and leaves his classmates to their excited dialogues at the opposite end of the room.

It goes unspoken that he always takes the same seat every afternoon at one sharp, and that Yamazaki and his puppy-eyed friend will join him ten minutes later, after their own classes are done. (Aizawa Rin reminds Haruka of Makoto on usual days, but in the rare times that Yamazaki manages to piss him off, he bears an uncanny resemblance to his namesake.)

It’s quiet usually, on their side of the cafeteria, since much like Haruka, Yamazaki isn’t inclined to speak much to dispel the silence. Haruka is glad for it, because he’s the same, really. Aizawa fills up the gaps in their conversations with his chattering about the most random of things: from the koi in the pond just outside the cafeteria to the most efficient technique for swimming breast.

It’s the sixth week now, and today, Aizawa has decided that his topic of conversation is going to be overtraining. Their lecturer had apparently taken too light of a stance against it, according to him, and Aizawa goes in on him hard. Haruka notices that opposite him, Yamazaki has become stony-eyed and tense.

“I mean, shouldn’t you be able to discern how much your body can t-“

“There should be mackerel in the bentos here.” Haruka decides to cut in because despite what he’d thought, it isn’t so much fun seeing Yamazaki’s face close up like that after all, especially after his smiles have started coming easier these days.

Aizawa breaks off from his rant and shoots Haruka a disbelieving look, but Yamazaki is trying to hide his smile by stuffing onigiri into his mouth, so Haruka re-focuses his attention on his own bento, satisfied. He falls back into his own thoughts, Aizawa now taken with arguing heatedly with Yamazaki about the pros and cons of building a playground on campus, in the background.

Haruka is due for a chat with Rin tomorrow. It’s still mind-boggling to him how he can actually  _see_ Rin on his clear, wide screen, with the help of an application he can never quite remember the name of. Something beginning with an S.

Makoto had come over for the first three weeks to help him set it up, but the week after, he’d called to tell Haruka that he had a dinner appointment with a uni friend, and so he’d instruct Haruka on how to set it up over the phone. It hadn’t gone too well (Makoto’s voice had started to break in singular frustration: Haruka’s incompetence with anything relating to technology had probably gotten the better of him) but by the end of it, Haruka had been newly-equipped with the knowledge of how to ‘sign in’ on Skype and calibrate his microphone and ‘web-camera’.

The first time he’d caught sight of Rin’s face, a week after he’d moved in to his Tokyo apartment, he’d been taken aback, unable to hide his surprise. Rin’s face had been too close to the camera, and he’d looked vibrant and solid, as if he weren’t merely an apparition on a too-bright screen. Somehow, the webcam had managed to capture the exact hue of his heavily lashed eyes, the minute pores on his forehead, the wispiness of his hair as it slipped into his eyes carelessly.

Even Rin’s voice had only been midly altered by the staticky hum of the laptop audio, and he’d looked so  _real_ that Haruka had thought for a second that if he just reached a hand out and into the clear screen, he’d be able to feel Rin’s soft skin.

Everytime Haruka sees him on video call, Rin’s skin glows a little more with the Australian sun. Despite the odds, he’s as pale as ever, skin soft-looking and very lightly freckled at places. Haruka sometimes lifts his own darkly tanned forearms, distressingly slender in comparison to Rin’s, and muses over how it’s fitting that someone like Rin, who shines so bright in his own way, would co-exist with the sunlight instead of being subject to it like Haruka and Makoto and even Yamazaki are.

Makoto won’t be coming over to join him with his chat with Rin tomorrow, even though he’d been there the week before and the week before that. Something about a group study session. A stray thought slips into Haruka’s mind but he’s reluctant to bring it up, partly because of the possibility of rejection and also because a dark, hollow part of him doesn’t want to give up the time in Rin’s life that he can call his own, doesn’t want Yamazaki to encroach on something that Haruka doesn’t want to admit he fiercely guards.

He looks up.

“Yamazaki.” He starts, and hopes that he’s not making a mistake.

Yamazaki, who’s been putting up with Aizawa’s increasingly frenzied explanation about the co-relation of swings to long-term happiness, looks up at that, and there must have been something in Haruka’s tone, because he raises a curious brow in Haruka’s direction.

“I’m talking to Rin tomorrow on S-Ska-“ It’s on the tip of his tongue, but he can’t for the life of him arrive at the conclusion of that irritating word.

“Skype, Nanase?” Yamazaki’s voice is alight with humour but he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to be particularly malicious, so Haruka leaves it be.

“Yes. Skype."

“Yeah okay?”

“…”

Yamazaki squints at him confusedly and Haruka sighs and promises himself an extra twenty minutes of soaking in the bath later for what he’s about to come out with.

“Do you want to come over and talk to him too?”

Aizawa looks between them knowingly and Haruka is discomfited by the gleeful look in his eyes. He looks like a shark that’s scented blood in the water and Haruka can almost see his ears perking up. Yamazaki though, he just looks like he’d been expecting anything but that.

“Uh, wouldn’t that be inconvenient for you, Nanase? I’m talking to him tomorrow too, probably after he’s done with your call. Or before, I'm not sure.”

“No, it’s not that inconvenient.” That’s all he says, and the rest is up to Yamazaki, really. Haruka isn’t even sure why he’d brought this up in the first place.

“Okay, yeah, why not. I mean it’d save Rin some time, if nothing else.” Yamazaki smiles a little ruefully. “Besides, I haven’t talked much about you with Rin. He’s gonna be surprised.”

Haruka nods and looks away to hide the miniscule smile tugging at his lips because an image of Rin’s bewildered face when he spots both Yamazaki and him in the same screen pops up in his mind just then.

“Why am  _I_  not invited?” Aizawa whines. “I wanna see your Rin too.”

Yamazaki bops him on the head a little fondly and shoves his face away when he brings it too close to his and Haruka just fixes Aizawa with a completely blank stare to get him off his case pre-emptively.

“Nanase-kun and Yamazaki-kun are the worst." Aizawa whines. "Your Rin’s going to have one hell of a time putting up with the both of you tomorrow.” He pretends to sulk, turning his gaze towards the windows and ignoring Yamazaki and him pointedly.

It goes on for a grand total of three minutes though, because Aizawa clearly has realized that neither Yamazaki nor Haruka are going to object to the silence and that they’d let him go on with this for the rest of their three years together if it were up to them. Yamazaki just smirks at Aizawa when he pretends like nothing had happened and begins a new line of conversation and Haruka feels for the first time since he’s left Iwatobi, like he’s fitting in, like home is maybe more than just a fixed place or people.

The day after, when he gets back home, his chest is fizzy with tiny bubbles of anticipation. Partly because Yamazaki’s coming over and Haruka isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be welcoming (safe to say, Haruka isn’t the most equipped or hospitable host) but mostly because the three of them – Haruka, Rin and Yamazaki – are finally going to be in the same conversation and Haruka knows that it’s going to be a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface.

Haruka has come to realize over the past few weeks that maybe Makoto had been right. He thinks Rin is beautiful, but he also thinks Makoto’s objectively attractive. Haruka likes to tease Rin and watch his face scrunch up in that characteristic scowl, but neither can he deny his partiality towards poking fun at Makoto and even Yamazaki in his own sneaky ways.

The tightening of his chest and the way his mouth dries up when Rin’s shirt lifts up at the corners to expose a strip of pale skin though, that’s unique to Rin. How his fingers itch with the feeling of wanting to take Rin’s red hair between his thumb and his forefinger, how when he’s soaking in the bath, he’ll sometimes think about touching the soft skin stretching over Rin’s wet clavicles with his index finger and making a straight path down to the solid muscles of his abdomen.

Haruka is alight with this knowledge and it sometimes makes his conversations with Rin a little stilted, because an universe of possibilities has opened up to him now and he loses focus every time Rin licks his lips or purses his mouth to blow his fringe out of his eyes.

The best thing about Yamazaki coming over is that Haruka knows he’ll no longer be the only one in the room who’s harbouring illicit thoughts about Rin. Haruka’s noticed how Yamazaki’s face is reluctantly fond even when he’s going in hard on Rin’s irritating tendencies. He smiles when he talks about how Rin’s cocksure attitude belies the way he cries at the drop of a hat and neither Aizawa nor Haruka himself miss the spark in his eye that only comes about when he’s talking about butterfly or  grumbling about Rin’s aggravating tendency to be either too early or too late for his Skype appointments.

Haruka has come to realize over the past six weeks that, for once in his life, he has someone who understands the contradictory mess of feelings that’s part and parcel of being friends with Matsuoka Rin. Fierce rivalry igniting in his chest in one moment, only for inexplicable fondness of Rin’s playful arrogance to take over in the very next one, with a kind of ceaseless wonder bubbling up in his being at how easily he catapults to Rin’s selfish whims, how Rin inevitably sweeps him along in his tide only to beach him on new shores every time.

Haruka doesn’t know how or when it happened, but the concept of swimming and Rin are tangled vines in his mind, one inextricable from the other. And yet, despite the complex workings of his mind, it’s all pretty simple if he actually tries to deconstruct it. Much like he wants to swim and feel the water accept him like it always has, he wants to see Rin happy. And if a stop in Australia is what Rin thinks will pave the way for bigger stages and greater glories, well, Haruka is willing to make do with a hundred and one long-distance Skype calls for the next couple of years.

He thinks that Yamazaki is the same too. Yamazaki has hardly been spared from the unpredictability of Rin’s actions, his persuasive loquaciousness, and most importantly, he hasn’t been exempt from tasting the aftermath of Rin’s inevitable departure from his life. He likely has learnt from experience, just like Haruka has, that Rin burns much too bright to be tied down to a place like Iwatobi or people like Haruka or Yamazaki.

The doorbell rings, interrupting his reverie, and Haruka takes his time stepping out of the now-tepid bathwater, one foot after another, and then draining it, watching a little longingly as the murky liquid swirls around the stopper and slips into the drainage. If it were Makoto, he wouldn’t even have had to lift a pinky, much less get dressed and head to the door. But it isn’t Makoto, and so Haruka reluctantly slips on baggy shorts and a cotton t-shirt wearing down at the seams.

Yamazaki musn’t have had issues finding his apartment by the looks of it, because the clock mounted on the living room wall tells Haruka that it’s six sharp: He’s just on time, but that’s nothing Haruka hadn’t expected. Yamazaki looks like the punctual, disciplined type anyway.

The doorbell rings one more time, as Haruka swerves around the unstable coffee table and crosses the hall, and then slows his step a little just because he feels like it. When he finally reaches out and pulls the door open, the brilliant evening light filters into the murky shade of the apartment, blinding Haruka just for a second. Yamazaki’s tapping his foot impatiently, and he fixes Haruka with an utterly unimpressed glance.

“I didn’t realize that it takes you-“ He lifts his forearm and squints exaggeratedly at the faint numbers on his watch dial. “Ten whole minutes to cross your hall and open the damn door.”

Haruka’s privately amused, but he doesn’t let it show and just shrugs instead, because there’s sweat building up at Yamazaki’s temples and he’s breathing a little hard. He must’ve hurried here, and Haruka feels just a little guilty for choosing to rile him up this time. Not that it hadn’t been fun.

He swings the door open a little wider and waits till Yamazaki has slipped off his red trainers (they find a spot beside Haruka’s purple ones) and stepped through the gateway, before pulling the door closed behind him.

Yamazaki’s drinking in the sight of his mostly-bare apartment curiously. He turns once and fixes his gaze on the framed photo of Makoto, Nagisa, Rei and him at his graduation ceremony, with him and Makoto all decked out in pristine robes with the fancy hats to match. After a moment, he shuffles his feet a little awkwardly and moves to stand by the two-seater.

“Hungry?”

Yamazaki grins at him, and it looks like his irritation from before has dissipated because he nods at Haruka and fixes him with an anticipatory look.

“Croquettes?” They ask at the same time.

Yamazaki shakes his head and starts snickering lowly and Haruka’s filled with a sense of déjà vu so strong that it nearly overwhelms him. He shakes his own head to clear it and then aims a little smirk of his own at Yamazaki.

 “Yeah.” He replies, just as Yamazaki himself voices his agreement in that exact word, and this time, Haruka can’t help the tiny smile that curves his lips. Yamazaki’s grin widens in shared amusement and he waves Haruka off with a flap of his hand.

“Get out of here and make me some croquettes.” He tells Haruka.

“I have to set up Suk- Sk-” He gestures to the laptop on the coffee table.

 “Skype, you idiot.”

“ _Skype_.” Haruka glares at him and continues. “Rin will be on in ten minutes.”

“I’ll set it up, Nanase. God knows how you’ve been doing it by yourself all this while.”

“I  _know_  how to. Makoto taught me.”

“Blind leading the blind.” Yamazaki mutters under his breath and Haruka makes sure to shoulder past him roughly (on Yamazaki’s left side of course) as he ambles to the kitchen.

 

-

 

Nanase’s desktop background, predictably, is one of a clear ocean, the muted light of the afternoon sun lending an impossible, silvery sheen to the topmost layer of water. It’s really quite beautiful. And doubtlessly modified by numerous filters before it had even reached the internet.

Sousuke sighs, trying to dispel the uneasiness that’s licking at his insides. It isn’t a big deal, really. Rin is going to be surprised, there’s little doubt about that, but not overtly so because he still has no clue about everything that’d gone on between himself and Nanase in the last few months of high school. He’ll probably just pass this off as Sousuke branching out and reaching out to new people, in true Rin style.

Sousuke isn’t an extrovert by any means, though. He isn’t ashamed to admit that he has few friends and that Rin, Gou and Kisumi have pretty much been the only stable ones in his chaotic life. He had had a phase in Tokitsu where he’d risen to popularity with both the juniors in the swim team and the general female population because of his status as the newbie dark horse, but he hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. He has little desire or need to keep in contact with so many people after all.

And after the breakdown of his shoulder, he’d spent two years holed away in his dorm room, only making stilted, awkward conversation with his roommate and taking all his meals in a corner of the cafeteria where the shadows enveloped him and kept him away from the sometimes inquisitive, but mostly pitying gazes of his classmates.

News had spread of his fall from grace after all, and Sousuke had become irascible and wary, wondering always if the slender, third year girl or the bubbly first year on the swim team who’d approached him had truly meant to make conversation or if they’d just been angling for a story; or worse, if they’d come to offer their  _sympathies_. God, he hates that word. Apologies he’s heard repeated to him ten times over, in the sweet, pitying voices of his club mates, in the stilted, formal tone of his career advisor, but they’d alleviated neither his pain nor his desolation.

Safe to say, even though he’s since made peace with himself, his desire to socialize has in no way increased.

Nanase is probably the same way. He’s too driven and quiet to come off as anything more than an introvert at best. And his one-track mind is probably the reason why Tachibana is the only one who can put up with him for extended periods of time. Tachibana and apparently now, Aizawa and Sousuke himself too. He wonders when and how that had happened.

“No Karuta grabbing sessions today, Nanase? I thought it came with the croquettes.” He calls out in the direction of the kitchen, where something is sizzling.

He pauses and draws in a deep breath as the fragrant smell of freshly made croquettes creeps into the living room and dances under his nose. Nanase must have already prepared them prior to his arrival. His stomach growls in almost reflexive response and he claps a hand over it through the white cotton of his t-shirt.

Nanase grunts vaguely in response, and it sounds like a dismissal, so Sousuke just adjusts the settings of the in-built microphone, leans back on the pillowy warmth of the cushions and closes his eyes for a moment. He’s suddenly exhausted.

When his eyes crack open of their own accord a few seconds, maybe two minutes, or even ten later, there’s a weight on the sofa beside him and Nanase’s stretching awkwardly over him to fiddle with the touchpad of the laptop. Sousuke’s not feeling energetic or generous enough to shift to the left and grant him easier access to the laptop, so he just sighs and reaches for the steaming croquettes on a fine china plate to the right of the keyboard, effectively obstructing Nanase’s view of the computer and elbowing him lightly in the side as he goes.

Just as he’s managed to stretch his arm far enough to grab the chopsticks by the plate, Nanase knocks into his forearm deliberately with his own in an attempt to displace him, the little fucker (Sousuke catches his almost imperceptible smirk from the corner of his eye).

Sousuke loses what little balance he’d had and the chopsticks go rattling onto the shiny marble floor just as his chin comes crashing down onto the clicker of the laptop. He just barely avoids biting through his tongue, and pain and irritation war within him. He snags the sleeve of Nanase’s t-shirt and tugs hard until he goes tumbling down into the narrow space in between the coffee table and the sofa.

Sousuke’s chin hits the clicker lightly again with the force of his own tug and the screen suddenly lights up with an odd noise.

They’re both breathing a little heavily from the flurry of activity when they look up at the screen to find a bright pair of eyes shifting from left to right, right to left rapidly, taking in the undoubtedly bizarre scene of the both of them sprawled inelegantly over the sofa and floor.

“Rin?”

“Rin?”

 He finds his voice at the same time as Nanase does, and this has  _got_  to stop happening. Sousuke feels like he’s lead starring in that freaky feature about Siamese twins with (apparent) telepathy. Nanase would be a  _terrible_  co-star.

“Haru?“ Rin’s voice is tinny and small through the speakers and he breaks off in obvious confusion. “Sousuke!?”

Sousuke’s eyes shift reluctantly away from the high-definition image stretching to include the bulk of Rin’s defined arms and the jut of his pale clavicles, made even more apparent by the stark black of his t-shirt.

In a tiny box by the right corner of the screen is an image of Nanase and himself, just barely in the screen and heads tilted awkwardly as they blink up into the webcam from their truly sorry-looking positions.  Nanase’s hair is tickling his nose and he bats at it irritatedly, turning away to the left and sneezing at the too-strong scent of chlorine that shrouds it.

“Nanase!” He hisses, tilting his head at a near-painful angle to look him in the eye. “Do you ever wash your hair? Or is it an annual event only?”

“You’re not that much better.” Nanase takes a deliberate whiff of air through his nose, scrunching up his face into a mild grimace and then makes sure to brace his elbow on the meat of Sousuke’s thigh as he hefts himself back onto the sofa. Sousuke winces and shoves it away before arranging himself back onto the cushions.

“You little-“

Nanase’s bored expression cuts him off and Sousuke just sighs resignedly and turns back to the screen, where Rin is still gaping at them unattractively.

“Close your mouth, Rin, or the fishes will get in.” Nanase says, with a pat of his hand to his own jaw, and Sousuke’s good humour returns with Rin’s indignant sputtering.

Rin looks disheveled and soft, the harsh fluorescent lights of his room flushing out his skin and lending his red eyes an unearthly glow. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear a little self-consciously as he looks between the two of them, and Sousuke bites his lip at the familiar little tic, a sudden feeling of longing flooding the cavity of his chest.

“You two. Where are you?” Rin’s voice is sharp.

“Nanase’s place.” He answers, and watches Rin’s irritation grow.

“And  _why_  exactly are you at Haru’s place, Sousuke?” Rin asks, drawing out his question with exaggerated patience.

“He came over.” Nanase pipes in. Always the helpful one.

“Haru..” Rin’s nostrils flare and his eyebrow starts twitching. “I know he came over, you idiot! I’m asking  _why_. I didn’t even know you two were friends!”

“We..” Sousuke glances over at Nanase just as Nanase himself turns to him and raises a questioning eyebrow.

“We know each other.” He tells Rin, at the same time that Nanase offers: “We’re friends.”

Sousuke whips his head back to Nanase in surprise. Right.

“We’re friends.” He corrects.

“We know each other.” Nanase amends simultaneously.

Sousuke has to cough to hide his smile and he catches Nanase shaking his head ruefully. Rin’s eyebrows have shot up to his hairline and he’s giving them an odd look.

“We’re friends who know each other.”

Rin snorts disbelievingly at that.

“A pair of weirdos is what the two of you are.”

It’s only then that Sousuke notices movement at the corner of Rin’s screen. Tufts of light hair slip in and out of view every few seconds and Rin must have noticed Sousuke and Nanase’s gazes straying because he mutters something irritatedly under his breath and turns around in his chair.

“Mizutani, you either stay in one place or get the hell out of the room and stay out until I finish this call. Stop flitting around like a damn bee.”

“Don’t be mean, Matsuoka!” There’s a familiar whine to the very unfamiliar voice and a fresh, young-looking face pops into the screen without warning (Japanese too, by the look and sound of him), a cheek butting into Rin’s own and making him curse.

“You-Don’t just do that!”

The kid (he hardly looks a day over sixteen) drinks in the sight of the both of them through the screen with big, curious eyes.

“Matsuoka, oh man!” He exclaims. “Both of them are here! Both of your-“

Rin’s eyes grow to the size of dinner plates, and he claps a palm over the kid’s mouth hurriedly. His panicked gaze flits between Mizutani and the screen and he chortles nervously.

“Aha. Ha. Yeah, that’s right, huh Mizutani?” Rin manages a tight little smile, but with the way his hand is clamping resolutely onto the lower half of the kid's face, it’s obvious he isn’t expecting a response. “Both of my  _friends,_  that’s what you meant right? You’re right. That’s Sousuke over there.” Rin points vaguely to where his image must appear in the screen. “And that’s Haru. They’re my  _good_   _friends_.”

Mizutani’s eyes widen in understanding even as he struggles to release himself from Rin’s vice grip. Understanding of what though, Sousuke isn’t sure. He glances over at Nanase but he just shrugs at Sousuke in lost solidarity.

When Rin finally lets Mizutani go, a devious grin settles onto the kid’s face, looking out-of-place amidst the big, innocent eyes and the rounded cheeks.

“Riiight, Matsuoka. I think I’ll go get something from the cafeteria now. Leave you to talk in private with your-“ He pauses a touch too long. “ _Friends._ ”

Rin smiles at him dangerously, tips of his sharp teeth glinting in the light, but Mizutani doesn’t look the least bit cowed. When he finally slips out of view, the tension seems to leave Rin’s limbs all at once and he sprawls back into his desk chair.

He’s just opening his mouth to say something when Mizutani’s grinning face pops back into the screen behind him.

“Just a tip though, Matsuoka. Next time we’re drinking, you shouldn’t tell me-“

“ _Mizutani_!” Rin’s voice cracks in the middle, and whooping laughter follows the kid out of the room until the door slams shut.

“Damn that little shit.” Rin growls, and then turns back to the screen, face still twisted into a mean little scowl.

Sousuke’s confusion has been building throughout the exchange and by the look of it, so has Nanase’s.

“You’ve always been shitty at holding your alcohol, haven’t you, Rin. What did you tell him?” Sousuke lifts an eyebrow suggestively.

It’s true: Rin is a terrible lightweight for all that he’s a big talker. Two distinct instances of him having to drag Rin back to his damn house and lug him up to his room and onto his bed (without waking Matsuoka-san) come to mind immediately. There had been copious amounts of vomit, an epic (rather moving) monologue and even some tears involved. Safe to say, Sousuke isn’t looking forward to a repeat performance any time soon. His  _brand new_  suedes had smelled vaguely of puke for the next month despite several washings.

“I told him that I have a friend who’s a big, fat busybody!” Rin’s shoots back heatedly, and if that isn’t an indication that something’s up, nothing is. Sousuke lets it slide for now though, because Rin looks like he’s about to head into an early aneurism, with the way a vein is pulsing at his ruddy brow.

“Rin’s lying.” Nanase points out, and Rin turns his glare to him. “But you  _are_  a busybody.” He concedes, addressing Sousuke, and it’s Sousuke’s turn to shoot him a dirty little look.

“Shut it, Nanase.” He mutters, and the balance is restored (or created rather) between the three of them with that.

Rin slips into easy conversation with them, gesticulating wildly in the middle of his story about one of their more crazy trainings and his face is animated with his zeal, smiles coming easily and unselfconsciously. His surprise at seeing Nanase and him together seems to have abated. Sousuke’s mouth goes dry whenever the strap of his loose tank top shifts to the side to reveal the pale, strong juncture of his neck and shoulder or when his bicep flexes neatly with the vigour of his motion.

He swallows to ward the feeling off and focuses on Rin’s words, the way he blinks rapidly whenever hair falls into his eyes and how his laughter is loud and sharp. He’s so painfully three-dimensional and vibrant even through the flat screen of the laptop that Sousuke is overcome with the urge to touch his hair or feel the warm line of his side against his own.

Beside him, Nanase too is surprisingly pro-active with his questions and liberal with his responses, more so than he’s ever been with Sousuke or Aizawa, and Sousuke is taken aback at the side of him that Rin has managed to draw out. His dark blue eyes are glinting with something foreign and he’s warm and alive, his persona completely at odds with the one he usually adopts in university.

“Enough about me.” Rin finishes the story about his coach’s stubborn insistence that they supplement their daily diet with at least three bananas, and his gaze roves over the two of them again, the light tinting his eyebrows and lashes a deep pink, instead of the red Sousuke knows it to be. “I think I’ve heard everything from bi-axial strokes to recovery time in more detail than I really want to know. What else is going on? Anyone in college caught your eye?"

“I told you, the indoor pool is rea-“

“For the love of god, Haru.” Rin cuts him off, but he’s grinning, voice exasperated and fond.

“Yamazaki can tell you about that one girl, though.” Nanase throws a sudden curve ball and Sousuke can almost hear his own neck creak with the speed in which he turns his head to frown at him. He thinks quickly, because one of Rin’s eyebrows is raised and he actually leans forward interestedly, chin resting on the palm of his right hand.

“Ah, you mean that girl that you like too, Nanase?” It’s a terrible diversion tactic, but he’s counting on Nanase not being the quickest thinker and falling into his own trap.

His gamble pays off. Nanase just blinks at Sousuke, and he tries to pull off a confused look, replete with blank eyes and an unsmiling mouth, but Sousuke can place the slight downward tilt to his lips after three months of knowing him and he’s not the least bit fooled.

Rin’s mouth forms a perfect ‘o’ and he makes a garbled sound of suprise.

“ _Sousuke_? And Haru too?” Rin marvels, and he looks like he’s waiting for something, more information on the matter perhaps, but Nanase stays silent beside him and Sousuke can’t think of anything he could offer that wouldn’t make this conversation painfully awkward.

“Hn.” Nanase finally contributes, and Sousuke elbows him lightly in the side, drawing a soft little whump of air from him. Nanase just glares at him in response.

Rin watches them all the while, his expression unreadable, but then he breaks out into a mildly strained smirk.

“So?” He asks. “When’s the big introduction? Has Makoto met her yet?” He thinks for a moment, eyebrows knitting. “He didn’t mention anything about that when we talked last, though.”

Sousuke’s beginning to find the entire ordeal amusing, and he reasons to himself that messing Rin about a little wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“Oh Tachibana knows her, alright.” He tries to keep his tone casual but the undercurrent of humour bleeds through anyway and Nanase sighs softly, raising an eyebrow as if to say ‘Are we really doing this? Now?’

Sousuke just lifts his shoulder in a nonchalant shrug and grins. Nanase holds his gaze for a couple of seconds and then sighs once more before turning to face Rin.

“Yes. She knows Makoto.”

Rin’s brows come together again in what almost seems like consternation and beside him, Sousuke watches Nanase’s fingers twitch like he’s just barely holding himself back from reaching out and into the screen and smoothing away the creases on his forehead.

It surprises Sousuke a little, how well he can read him when it comes to his interactions with Rin, even though this is the first time they’ve been put in such a situation. Birds of a feather flock together, he thinks wryly, but then stubbornly tamps down on the pulse of solidarity that Nanase’s arm pressed to his, invokes within him.

“Hm.” Rin murmurs, a sort of understanding dawning on his expression and painting his face an unfamiliar melancholic shade. “You two are pretty serious about her, aren’t you.” He smiles a little wryly to himself and shakes his head, the last traces of that strange discomfiture fading from his eyes.

Nanase digs the ball of his thumb into Sousuke’s thigh hard following that, but Sousuke just shifts away, too intent on figuring out the implications of that transitory expression that’d graced Rin’s face, too honest and intense to be anything but real. Nanase’s thumb returns though, and he digs in with his nail this time, the pinch obvious even through Sousuke’s chinos, so he chances a glance at him.

Nanase’s eyes dart to Rin, where he’s continuing with his very one-sided interrogation on the bright screen, and then back to Sousuke’s own, and he shakes his head firmly just once.

Sousuke glowers at him a little because  _Nanase_  had started the entire thing after all, but he nods back at him anyway and deftly changes the topic. There’re some things more important than pride after all, and as if in answer, his mind provides him a fleeting memory of a smile, sharp as a razor’s edge and resplendent with uncomplicated joy.

 

-

 

Haruka’d always thought back when he’d been in Iwatobi that whoever invented the phrase ‘time flies’ clearly hadn’t tried his hand at being a bored student. But here in college, fly it does. He barely notices the weeks sail by, intensely absorbed in the refinements to his techniques that his coach is determined to hammer into his head and attempting to pull up his below-average grades in theory class.

(His grumpy module instructor in Nippon U had called him to his desk after a lecture and demanded to know if Haruka was trying to be funny with him. He’d pointed out the red-circled answers of ‘Feel the water’ and ‘Understand the water’ that Haruka had provided for his pop quiz and scowled at him, but Haruka still resolutely feels that he’s right: Swimming isn’t entirely about technique after all, it’s important to  _feel_ the right way about the water itself.)

Before he knows it, the branches of the trees surrounding his dormitory have become bare and the air is no longer the kind of brisk that one could ward off with a loosely wrapped scarf. His trainings have been shifted to the indoor poolhouse and Haruka’s ears and fingertips tingle and burn with the sluicing of the cold winds against them whenever he walks through the streets of Tokyo.

Makoto had dragged him on a shopping trip in one of those malls he’d begun frequenting with his university friends and pleaded with him to try out three different winter coats (all of them either too fancy, too big or too scratchy) before Haruka had given up and chosen one at random just to hear Makoto sigh in relief. He’d even treated Haruka to hot udon later, his cheeks rosy with the warmth of the heated store and his smile glowing and happy as he made small talk, so Haruka can’t complain. Much.

The approach of winter also means one more thing. Something his entire being is anticipating, has been anticipating since March. Rin is coming back to Japan. Rin is coming back, and he’s visiting Haruka, Makoto and Sousuke in Tokyo first before they head back down to their hometowns to spend Christmas there (Nagisa is so excited about their reunion that he’s been sending strange and mostly indecipherable emoticons to Haruka’s phone every day for the past two weeks, complete with a countdown).

Haruka’s mind fills with the possibilities of their meeting, and by the fifth scenario that’s come up (Rin spotting him from behind the university gates and sprinting towards him, only to wrap Haruka up in his arms and warm his jacket-clad shoulder with his tears) he admits to himself what he’s known for a while now.

He’s in love with Rin.

There’s no one quite like Rin. Haruka is bored by common things and he’s impatient and  _older_  now, but every time he’s with Rin, it feels like he’s seeing the world through a lens dusted with wonder and awe at the simplest of things. His eyes can’t seem to get enough of what Rin shows him, his skin tingles with the possibilities that Rin brings with him and it’s never enough. It’s never been enough with Rin, that’s the first thing Haruka had learned when he'd first met Rin and here he is, seven years later, still hopelessly entangled in the silken spider’s web that Rin has weaved around him.

At least, he thinks, as he watches Sousuke laughing reluctantly at one of Aizawa’s terrible jokes about their module coordinator, he’s assured of company in that web.

Sousuke’s wrapped up in a green hoodie, the thick woolen scarf that Aizawa (both Sousuke and him refuse to call him Rin, much to his dismay) and him had picked out for his birthday a month or two earlier, loosened around his neck. Sousuke’s smiles have been coming easier now, and they’re warm with anticipation. Rin’s return is on his mind too, he thinks, just like it’s constantly been on Haruka’s own.

Rin’s presence means that much more with the both of them here and that tiny pinprick of a feeling of wanting to hoard all of Rin’s time, to build a glass house around just the two of them and be warmed by Rin’s presence, it’s been subdued lately.

Sousuke is in love with Rin too, Haruka knows that almost as surely as he knows his own feelings for Rin. But it doesn’t make him feel uncomfortable or intensely wary. Instead, there’s a vague feeling of inevitability that’s risen up within him, calming and sure. Sousuke isn’t his competition, he’s his friend, his comrade in the creeping sense of unknowing (Does Rin know? Does Rin feel the same way?) that Haruka is immersed in.

After all, feelings are just that. Haruka’s love for Rin isn’t overwhelming; it’s something gentle and warm, washing over him over and over like the waves on a shore every time he thinks of him or speaks with him. Haruka thinks that it’d be unfair to hold something as pure as a feeling like that against Sousuke, especially when Sousuke’s friendship is partly anchoring him to that very shore.

When the day of Rin’s visit comes, it’s the last day of exams for Sousuke and Aizawa. Rin had insisted on taking the train from the airport to the station a stone’s throw away from Nippon U and then walking to the campus, unwilling to bother either Haruka or Sousuke with the task of fetching him. Haruka privately thinks that Rin maybe just wants a little time to himself, to take in the sight of Tokyo, the buildings coated in a fine layer of snow and the air wet and cold with the freshness of a new winter, so he’d agreed.

He takes a bus to Nippon U from his dormitory (his own coach had debriefed them the day before, instructing them to keep fit and warm during the winter break), and he stills his own restless fingers on the handlebars a little guiltily when he notices an old lady slanting a knowing glance at him.

“Excited to see your girlfriend?” She asks, her eyes forming warm little crescents as she smiles at Haruka. Haruka’s first instinct is to deny it, but he looks out of the window for a second and finds happy couples making their way through the trodden snow hand-in-hand and then thinks,  _why not_?

By the time he gets off the bus, he’s heard the little lady’s story twice over, about her own boyfriend who’d later become her fiancé and then her husband and the story of how they’d met on a rainy day in a bus stop, with nothing but acres of grass for miles ahead. He’s also gotten plenty of advice about where to take Rin for dinner and what kind of flowers to present him with. Instead of making him feel uncomfortable and flighty though, it just makes him a smile a little.

Sousuke’s standing inside the foyer, hands tucked into his puffy winter jacket and neck reddened with the cold, and he waves when he sees Haruka stepping in through the gates. Haruka lifts an arm to wave back and the motion causes his loose scarf to unravel and pile onto the ground. He watches, as Sousuke starts laughing, and he’s unable to conjure up within himself the slightest feeling of annoyance. Not when Sousuke’s usually guarded eyes are bright with excitement, and definitely not when Rin is going to be here any time now.

“Hn.” Haruka tells him, as he lopes up the final step to the raised platform of the foyer, eager to escape the brisk chill of the early afternoon.

“Hmm.”                                                       

“Hmmmm.”

Over the past six months, it’s become something of a running gag and the closest to a routine that the two of them have. Haruka privately thinks that it’s not only him, but also Yamazaki who’s often bereft of things to say, and this is a good way to tease Aizawa (he still believes that it’s some sort of code language, all the monosyllabic grunts and words that transpire between Sousuke and himself, and that he’s being left out of something very important).

But this time, Sousuke starts grinning for no particular reason and Haruka is hard pressed not to let his own small smile show. For all that the winter is at full throttle now and the cold is near unbearable, there’s a strange warmth behind his eyelids, crackling down his veins to warm the pits of his belly and the tips of his toes. Rin is going to step into the very gates that he had a few moments ago, and a hundred and one scenarios have played through Haruka’s mind over the past few weeks about that very moment, but he thinks none will be as fulfilling as the real thing.

Sousuke nudges his shoulder with his own, steps back and slides into one of the armchairs by the corner of the foyer. Haruka glances at his closed eyes and uncomplicated smile and thinks,  _this is my friend_. Sousuke is nothing like Rin, for all that he’d imagined him to be when he’d been in middle school.

Sousuke blows cooler than an arctic wind when Haruka manages to tick him off, and he never thinks twice about telling Haruka off when he’s testing his patience. He still irritates Haruka at times and unsettles him, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s precisely that which has kept Haruka present, kept him feeling humbled and real. He’d started off this year with the paper-thin cord of solidarity that’d bound him to Sousuke (Rin had dug hooks deep into both their skins by then) but he looks at him now and thinks that maybe, just maybe, in a world without Makoto or Rin, he would still have a friend called Yamazaki Sousuke.

It had started with Rin, as most things in Haruka’s life have, but it doesn’t have to end there.

Sousuke’s half-lidded, sleepy eyes dart to the gates behind Haruka and then snap wide open, and Haruka has not a doubt in this world about what (or who) could have put that look on Sousuke’s face.

He spins around immediately and he’s not at all surprised to see a head of messy red hair just by the entrance, but his heart still leaps to his throat and makes itself at home there. He’s learnt, over and over, that he’ll never stop reacting to Rin in a visceral, instinctive sort of way.

Sousuke’s up on his feet in a second and he takes a few steps forward by instinct, before halting in his tracks and turning a sheepish look back at Haruka. Haruka wants to tease him, but he has a feeling that the way his own fingers are twitching in heady anticipation would give him away anyway.

Rin is making his way towards them briskly, and he’s a bright, conspicuous spot of colour amidst the sheen of white coating the grounds, with his signature plaid scarf wrapped tightly around his neck, covering his chin and mouth. The falling snow dusts his hair and his tight black jeans generously and Haruka’s fingers dig into his palms at how easily and uncomplicatedly beautiful Rin is, even when he’s not trying.

Sousuke’s moved back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Haruka, and Haruka watches him bite his lip as his eyes track Rin’s progress. He bumps his shoulder into Sousuke’s deliberately and feels the answering nudge.

Rin finally comes to a halt, standing with his toes against the bottom-most step of the flight leading up to the foyer and then pauses to catch his breath, grasping the shoulder strap of his carry-on and slinging the hefty-looking lump to the ground, then doing the same with his smaller slingbag.

He squints up at them and blinks away the wetness where tiny flakes of snow must have melted on his lashes.

“What?” He asks, because Haruka and Sousuke are still staring at him, rooted to the spot and motionless. “Not even a hello? After I came all the way to Tokyo to see your sorry asses?”

He grins then though, kicking at his fallen bag a little self-consciously and tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

“I’m back.” He tells them, voice a little softer than before, and that’s all it takes for Haruka to break out of his semi Rin-induced trance. He feels the muscles of Sousuke’s arm jump, where it’s pressed to his own, and then the both of them are turning to grin at each other for a single electrifying second, before they make their way down the stairs to get to Rin (and unlike every one of Haruka’s imagined scenarios, it’s  _him_  who’s reaching for Rin, his fingers cold and stretched out, yearning for the warmth of Rin’s form).

Sousuke reaches him first, and Haruka watches as Rin’s fist comes up a few seconds well in advance, and as Sousuke bumps it eagerly with his own and then closes his palm over it, the two of them breaking out into matching delighted grins.

Rin turns to grip Haruka’s hand with his own almost immediately and he’s so, so warm, even though Haruka knows that he must have traveled more than one and a half hours in the unforgiving cold to reach the campus. The skin of Rin’s palm is paradoxically both soft and calloused against his own and he squeezes his hand once, and then does it again, just to feel Rin gripping him back just as tightly.

Rin disentangles his hands from both of theirs and bites the inside of his cheek, his gaze darting from Haruka to Sousuke in an endless little cycle. His eyes are dry. Haruka wants to lean forward and catch his cold-reddened lower lip between his teeth to find out if he tastes like the melting snow.

He finally smiles, his lips pulling up high and easy at the corners, and his cheeks pinken with pleasure. Haruka hears Sousuke make a soft little noise beside him and he  _understands_. It’s been far too long, and Rin’s smiles and the imperfect high arch of his eyebrows never quite translate through the medium of his webcam: not at least, like they stand out when he’s swaying on his heels before Haruka, three-dimensional and so, very beautiful.

His jacket sleeves fit closely around his arms, and it’s pretty clear to Haruka that Rin’s gained some bulk in both his arms and legs; yet another sign of how hard he’s been working. When he bends down again to pick up his fallen bags, Haruka watches his quads flex through the skintight black denim and swallows hard to ward off the restless feeling that’s clambering up his throat.

He bends quickly to grab the sling bag and toss it over his neck and shoulder just before Rin’s fingers can twine around it, and Rin snorts at him good-naturedly.

“Quite the helpful guy today, aren’t you?” He asks, but doesn’t protest. Haruka doesn’t reply because beside him, Sousuke’s making a motion to reach down and grab the bulkier backpack. Rin slips his foot into one of the handles and drags it backwards and out of his reach as soon as he catches his intent.

He gives Sousuke’s shoulder a meaningful glance and then deliberately lugs the bag up and onto his own shoulders. But then, as if to mitigate what had probably seemed like a dismissal, he steps forward, yanks off the beanie hanging from the strap of his backpack and tiptoes the slightest bit to pull it onto Sousuke’s head.

“You can hang on to that for me.”

Haruka thinks Sousuke looks strange in red, especially when everything else he’s wearing is a dark and neutral shade of blue. It feels like anyone who catches sight of Sousuke would know immediately that it isn’t his own, or maybe that’s just him.

Rin tugging at the sleeve of his jacket insistently gets him moving, and he slows his step to match it with Sousuke’s, letting Rin wander off ahead with his eyes roving curiously over the stone walls of the foyer and the relieved students milling within them.

When he glances sideways at Sousuke though, he seems fine and not at all bothered by Rin however indirectly bringing up the touchy issue of his shoulder. Haruka had hardly been intent on stepping on eggshells around him about it, but nevertheless, in the past eight months, he’d consciously avoided the topic, only bringing it up once when Sousuke had looked a little melancholy watching the uni swim team board the bus to get to prefecturals.

Sousuke meets Haruka’s gaze with his own inquiring one, but he just shakes his head and nods towards Rin, who’s already attracted the attention of a couple of the students, courtesy of his monstrous backpack and bright hair. Haruka knows that even if he weren’t carrying it around, eyes would be on him nevertheless, simply because Rin has a larger-than-life presence: one that even he sometimes finds himself envious of.

Sousuke’s gaze catches on the corridor on the far end of the foyer leading to the lecture theatres and Haruka follows it. Aizawa is striding out, engaged in conversation with a long-legged girl with shiny black hair tumbling down to her shoulders. His cheek dimples as he waves farewell to her at the fork and Sousuke makes an amused sound at the back of his throat at the sight.

Aizawa turns their way, even though he couldn’t possibly have heard Sousuke from all the way across the room, and his fading grin picks up again, almost blinding in its intensity. He waves to them. Haruka thinks that he can almost imagine a set of puppy ears and a wagging tail on the kid, with the way he’s elbowing his way through the crowd in his hurry to get to them.

“Rin isn’t here yet?” He raises his voice above the din, impatient as ever, and unable to even wait till he reaches them to pose the question. When he reaches them and has patted Haruka and Sousuke on the shoulder affectionately, Haruka points him to the right, where Rin is absorbed in reading the contents of a colourful display of pamphlets pinned up on the noticeboard, promoting the university volleyball team. Sousuke sets his palms on Aizawa’s shoulders to turn him in the right direction.

Just then, Rin turns around, messy strands of his hair catching in his left eye and his mouth with the motion. He raises an amused eyebrow at Haruka and Sousuke when he catches Aizawa goggling at him and then makes his way over to them.

“I was just gonna ask if we should get out of here, but I think you should get this guy some sugar first. He looks like he’s going into hypoglycaemia.” He gives Aizawa a mildly concerned once-over.

“Matsuoka Rin-kun!” Aizawa seems to have snapped out of his momentary daze. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Rin looks taken aback at the familiarity with which Aizawa greets him, but quickly recovers, turning to face him fully.

“All good things I hope.” He sniggers, and a devious gleam enters Aizawa’s eyes. Devious enough for Haruka’s heart to start beating a little faster and for Sousuke’s grip on Aizawa’s shoulder to tighten.

“Oh, more than just good, Matsuoka-kun.” Aizawa continues. “In fact-“

Haruka watches Aizawa’s brows come together in mild discomfort and decides it’s probably because of Sousuke’s grip.

“Anyway.” Aizawa sighs, and Sousuke’s hand slides off his shoulder. He holds out a hand. “I’m Aizawa Rin.”

Rin snorts and the look he shoots Haruka and Sousuke tells Haruka that they’re going to be in for a little bit of a converstation later.

“And I’m Matsuoka Rin, but you already knew that.” Rin takes Aizawa’s hand and shakes it for just a couple of seconds, before his attention strays back to Haruka and Sousuke.

“So?” He asks. “Shall we go? Or do you wanna catch up with your friend first?”

Aizawa answers almost immediately, a familiar little grin slipping onto his face.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t want to take away their Rin-time. They’ve been waiting for pretty long now.” His gaze catches Sousuke’s. “Isn’t that right, my friends?”

When Sousuke pointedly looks the other way, Aizawa turns to Haruka beseechingly. Haruka just grunts and nudges at Rin to get him moving.

“Sousuke and Haru are terrible love-struck idiots!” Aizawa whines, and Haruka catches Sousuke’s grin from the corner of his eye. Rin narrows his eyes at Aizawa for just a split second, so quickly that had Haruka had blinked, he would’ve missed it.

“Sousuke and Haru are fine.” Haruka tells Aizawa, and then reaches out to pat the side of his head, watching as Sousuke bumps shoulders with him affectionately.

“We’ll call you, Aizawa.” Sousuke throws over his shoulder, as they get moving. “Remember that bet? I’m gonna wipe the floor with the both of you when we get to the pool table.”

“Ha. You wish, Sousuke! See you, Haru! You guys have fun alright!”

Sousuke gives Haruka a reluctantly amused look when Aizawa starts making kissy noises behind them, and then propels Rin forward quickly with a hand on the small of his back.

“What a character.” Rin mutters, still looking a bit thrown off by the force of Aizawa’s inexhaustible energy, but Haruka is already distracted by the pale line of his neck, where his hair parts.

 

-

 

Sousuke has always been attuned to Rin’s emotions, it’s as natural to him as the sky is blue or the world is round: so it’s not easy for him to miss the restless energy that Rin has been radiating since he’d arrived at Tokyo, but he chalks it up to the long hours of travelling and the unforgiving cold.

Even now, as they finish up lunch at a small Ramen joint and walk through the densely populated streets, Rin seems a little caught up in his thoughts. Sousuke had expected him to be as forthcoming as he usually is during their Skype chats, but he’s strangely subdued, only turning to smile or nod at Sousuke when he brings up their plans for Christmas or at Haruka whenever he murmurs something in too low of a voice for Sousuke to decipher.

Sousuke knows Haruka has picked up on it too, because he shoots Sousuke a puzzled look from behind Rin. Sousuke shrugs at him, because the only things he can imagine would have Rin this reserved is either something related to swimming (he hopes valiantly that that’s not the case) or exhaustion from his long journey.  

“Where to now, Rin?” He asks, even though he already knows that they’re heading over to Haruka’s dorm for the evening, before they meet Makoto there, well and early in the morning, and then catch the train to Iwatobi.

Rin quirks a distracted smile at Sousuke and tells him just that. The uneasiness in Sousuke’s chest builds.

When they’re finally in Haruka’s dorm room, after a long bus ride and navigating a series of maze-like corridors, Rin lets his massive backpack slide onto the floor and then on second thought, nudges it to the corner of the room. Sousuke wants to smile at how conscious he is about order even when he’s so obviously caught up in something else.

Sousuke has already brought a carry-on with all the clothes and essentials necessary for travel a few days ago and dumped them in Haruka’s room, so he has more time now to get whatever’s bothering Rin out of him.

Haruka waves Rin to the single bed, pushing the covers away from them to create space for him to sit, and Sousuke follows, slumping down at the corner of the mattress and watching Rin as he bites his lip.

After a moment or two of silence, Sousuke hears Haruka perch on the other corner of the bed tentatively. He meets Haruka’s gaze silently and jerks his head in the direction of a now quiet and contemplative Rin, who’s made himself comfortable on the bed between the two of them after kicking off his shoes.

Haruka’s eyes glitter in response and he frowns.  Sousuke is just about to open his mouth to say something inane and break the silence (it’s completely unlike him, but with Rin, nothing is quite as it is) when Rin speaks.

“You never did tell me how you two became all chummy.” He says with a small smile, scooting back further on the bed to lean his back against the wall.

Sousuke watches Haruka shrug indifferently and almost by instinct, mirrors his gesture.

“Just ran into Haruka on campus s’all.” He mutters a little sheepishly, wondering suddenly if this might be the reason Rin’s all clammed up and unlike his usual self.

Rin is quick to dispel that notion.

“I’m happy, you know.” He tells Sousuke. “Back in high school, it didn’t look like you two were gonna be the best of friends.” When Haruka’s head whips up at that, Rin just laughs. “I have  _eyes_ , Haru. No one could have missed all that tension. But I just chalked it up to a little bit of friendly rivalry.”

He grins again. “It’s nice to see you two getting along now, though.”

Sousuke nods at that, because it honestly is nice, nicer than he’d have ever expected, to look at Haruka and see a friend in him.

“Then what’s the matter, Rin?” Haruka’s blunt as ever, Sousuke thinks, but it saves him the trouble of questioning Rin (he’d doubtless be much more awkward about it, since Sousuke and Rin just don’t have a habit of  _asking_ each other things like this out of the blue).

“Huh?” Rin’s eyes narrow. “Nothing’s wrong. Why do you ask?”

“Rin.” Sousuke interjects, trying to be patient just this one time. “You’ve been moping about the whole time. I have eyes, you know?” He turns Rin’s words against him and waits for the inevitable dismissal. He isn’t disappointed.

“Nothing.” Rin mutters stubbornly. “Just thinking is all.”

“What’re you thinking about, Rin?” Haruka’s chin is resting on his palm now, and he looks honestly curious.

“Just something.”

Sousuke sighs. “We can do this all night, you know.”

“Sousuke!” Rin snaps. “It’s nothing. No, Haru.” He lifts his palm when Haruka tries to interrupt. “It’s nothing.”

Sousuke shares a meaningful glance with a now peeved Haruka (it doesn’t go unnoticed by Rin). Then, he just shakes his head and begins fiddling with his phone, making sure that his gaze doesn’t stray to Rin even once.

When he chances a sneaky glance at Haruka, he’s relieved to see that he’s gotten the hint. Haruka’s picking at the loose threads on the bed linen with preternatural focus, his gaze deliberately avoiding Rin’s too. The silence drags on for a few moments, but it feels more like hours to Sousuke. He’s taken to scrolling through his message archives from four months ago just to distract himself from the anticipatory feeling in his gut.

“Fine!” Rin bursts out all of a sudden, and Sousuke grins at Haruka a little smugly.

“Wipe that smile off your face, you twit.” Rin jabs him in the side and it’s quite painful. Sousuke lets it go without any retaliation though, because if all goes well, he’s going to get answers soon.

Rin just brings his knees up and rests his chin on them. He looks so young right then, with his loose hair falling around his face like a curtain and his eyes bright and serious in the gaps in between. Sousuke has to fight down the urge to crawl into his space and kiss his doubtlessly warm forehead.

“Remember that girl the two of you like?” He says, voice low and urgent.

Sousuke shares a wary look with Haruka and nods. Then remembers that Rin’s gaze is on his own knees.

“Yeah?” He voices, only to see Rin flinch minutely.

“What’s she like?”

“She’s uh-” Sousuke thinks for a moment.

“Beautiful.” Haruka finishes for him.

“Oh.” Rin tells them, his voice subdued, but he looks like he’d been expecting that. He laughs a little, but the sound is stilted and awkward. “Of course she is. Only the best for Haru and Sousuke, eh?”

It’s silent for a moment.

“There’s someone I like too, you know.” Rin suddenly murmurs, and Sousuke’s chest clenches so tightly for a second that he has to struggle to breathe. His mind begins racing in circles, trying to figure out  _who, when, why_. The possibilities are endless and unfathomable, especially because Rin has been an entire ocean away from them for eight whole months. And this is assuming that it’s someone Rin even met in Australia.

Haruka’s breath hitches audibly across from him, and Sousuke swallows and avoids his gaze, because he knows that whatever he’s feeling will be reflected in those blue eyes, and he’s not ready to accept the possibility of Rin being in love with a nameless figure. A girl with an impossibly bright smile and feathered hair and a talent for butterfly maybe, or even a guy with pale skin and blond hair who spoke perfect English.

“It’s not really a person though.” Rin admits, voice so soft that Sousuke has to strain his ears to pick up on it. He instinctively shifts closer to Rin and watches Haruka do the same.

“Not a person?” He’s not sure who’s spoken, him or Haruka, but it doesn’t matter at this point.

“Not  _a_  person.” Rin confirms. “Two people.”

Sousuke’s mind is a hopeless maelstrom of confusion at this point, tinged with the barest hints of hope. He stubbornly pushes the elusive feeling away, choosing to instead question Rin further.

“Two people.” Haruka sounds like he’s been hit in the face by a fish, for lack of a better term.

“Two people from Australia?”

Rin flushes. He doesn’t reply.

“Not Australia then?” Sousuke continues where Haruka had left off, hope blooming persistently in his chest with every second of silence between them.

Rin looks up then, his eyes cloudy and suddenly furious.

“You know they’re not from Australia.” He growls, and Sousuke’s eyes widen in surprise at the vehemence in his voice, his traitorous mind suddenly blank and unhelpful.

“Rin.” Haruka’s voice is close now. He must’ve crawled closer in. “Rin, who are they?”

Rin doesn’t answer him, just clenches and unclenches his fingers in a nervous little rhythm.

“I thought and thought about it, you know how I am.” He starts, after a little intake of breath. “And at first I thought I was confused. Then I thought I was just being selfish. I just  _had_  to make my own life harder, didn’t I.” He laughs self-depreciatingly.

“Rin?” Sousuke prompts. Rin is using a classic derailing method now, and no one can recognize it better than Sousuke, because this is exactly what Rin used to do in sixth grade, whenever Sousuke had tried to question him about Matsuoka-san’s passing, and he’d deflect and deflect and deflect.

“But after a while, I mean, I realized I couldn’t help it. It’s just how I feel. And it  _is_ selfish and it’s so confusing, but it doesn’t make how I feel any less real.” There are frustrated tears building in Rin’s eyes, but his expression is fierce and confident, like he wouldn’t take back what he’s just said for the whole world.

“ _Rin._ ” Sousuke and Haruka chorus, and the sudden volume of their combined voices makes Rin look up reflexively, a few tears escaping from the corners of his eyes more from surprise than anything else. He wipes them away quickly and bites his lip.

“Fuck.” He says to himself, voice steady and calm despite his tear-streaked cheeks. “I’ve really gone and done it now.”

Sousuke barely registers what he’s saying. He reaches forward to pull Rin’s forearms away from where they’re pressed to his eyes, gentling circling his thumb and index finger around the solid muscles of them.

“Rin,  _who_?” Haruka presses. “Just tell us.”

“It’s not like you don’t already know.” Rin counters, eyes shifting from Haru’s to Sousuke’s and then back down, cheeks flushing in shame.

“No.” Sousuke murmurs, tightening his grip until he can feel muscle trembling underneath. “We don’t know, Rin.”

The silence that follows is long and charged.

“H-haru.” Rin finally mumbles, and Sousuke swears that his heart stops beating for just a second. A heavy kind of despair settles in his chest, swirling like molasses in the spaces between his ribs. He wants to be happy for Haruka, because Haruka is his friend, but his chest is physically hurting and he thinks he can almost feel the sting of tears at the back of his eyes. “and Sousuke.”

“What?” Sousuke’s trembling now. He’s not sure if his fevered mind had concocted that last part in a final attempt to keep him from dissolving into sad resignation. “What did you say?”

“I like Sousuke.” Rin says again, eyes narrowed and defiant and wet. “And Haru.”

“I like Sousuke and Haru.”  He repeats, and then it seems to hit him, because his eyebrows come together and he squeezes his eyes shut, palm coming up to rest over them.

“Fuck.” Rin mutters again. “I’m so sorry. I’ll just uh-“ He scrambles off the bed in a few frantic motions before either Sousuke or Haruka can stop him. “I’ll just go. I just uh, need a little-” An almost involuntary, watery noise escapes him, and he rubs at his mouth forcefully with the back of his hand, as if betrayed by his own voice.

Sousuke is still reeling with Rin’s latest confession, unable to process what he’d said. He privately thinks that he’d have been far less surprised if Rin had ended it with just “Haru”. But he hadn’t. And Rin’s at the door now, one hand scrabbling at the knob and the other wiping at his eyes in frantic little motions even though there’re no tears spilling out.

“Rin, wait!” Haruka calls out, and Sousuke is on his feet and across the room almost immediately, his hand closing over Rin’s on the doorknob. Haruka slides in beside him and the line of his side is overlapping with Sousuke’s own, their fronts pressing against Rin’s trembling back.

“Fuck.” Rin mumbles again, but this time, his voice is watery and resigned.

Sousuke realizes then how much this is affecting Rin. How much this means to Rin. For the first time in a long time, sheer unadulterated relief bolts through his form, relief and an overwhelming sense of love for all that Rin is, his tears and his shit-eating smiles, the way he kicks at the back of Sousuke’s knee when he’s feeling particularly vindictive or playful, how he’s always been sure with his words, until now.

Rin tries to push off from the door, his palm still uselessly fumbling with the knob, but Sousuke and Haruka’s combined weight pushes him back into the wooden surface and he makes a frustrated, sad little noise that pulls at Sousuke’s heartstrings. A glance at Haruka shows that he’s far from unaffected too.

Haruka’s eyes are glittering with an intensity that Sousuke knows is mostly reserved for situations involving large bodies of water or, well,  _Rin_. His mouth is trembling almost indiscernibly, but Sousuke recognizes the intent in them, the words that he’s trying to put across.

Haruka’s hand comes to rest gently, so gently on the back of Rin’s head, where it’s now leaned against the door, and he cards his fingers through the soft-looking strands of red in a gentle, repetitive motion.

“Rin, don’t run.” Sousuke says, but Rin remains silent. Tears are running in earnest down the sides of his face now, where he’s facing the door, and Sousuke wonders why neither he nor Haruka have said anything to put him out of his misery yet.

“Rin, I-“ Haruka stops, his eyes wide with what looks like an epiphany, and he turns to Sousuke, eyes swirling with a storm. Sousuke just swallows, and holds his gaze, watching the fear and hope and love within him play out in Haruka’s eyes in rapid succession. “Rin, I like you. I like you.” Rin’s entire form stiffens.

Sousuke gapes for a little bit, because Haruka’s put into words what has been running through Sousuke’s mind for the past minute.  _I like you, Rin. I like you so much that it scares me. I can’t get you out of my head. I think I’m in love with you._

He doesn’t even realize that he’s said the last part out loud until Rin, in a last attempt, forcefully pushes off the door with his forearms, whirling around in surprise and nearly knocking Haruka in the nose and Sousuke in the chin. His mouth is quivering and his face is blotchy and wet.

“What?” He gets out, and his voice is low and even, but he looks almost uncomfortable, crowded in by both Sousuke and Haruka’s forms. Sousuke has no intention of moving away. Not when he’s finally so close to Rin, not when Rin is looking up at him with those beautiful eyes, wide with shock and disbelief.

“I-“ Sousuke stops and watches Haruka’s eyes dart between Rin’s eyes and mouth agitatedly. “You’re the one, Rin. You’re the one we’ve been talking about all this while.” He allows a short, disbelieving laugh, because everything  _had_  to be this dramatic with Rin. It just wouldn’t do, otherwise.

“Sousuke?” Rin’s hands come up to clamp on his and Haruka’s upper arms. “Haru? If you’re joking around with me, I swear-” His voice breaks.

“Would I really joke about this, Rin?” Haruka asks, voice low and more charged with emotion than Sousuke has ever heard it. “Would  _we_  joke about this?”

Sousuke nods at Rin solemnly, trying to keep his traitorous lips from turning up at the corners with a heady joy that he just can't seem to contain.

When Rin just fixes his gaze on the gap between Sousuke and Haruka’s heads and bites his lip apprehensively, Sousuke lets his palm slip over Rin’s, and threads his fingers through Rin’s own limp ones. Rin’s fingers curl slightly around his reflexively, and Sousuke’s intake of breath is more relieved than anything.

And then Haruka leans forward in an abrupt motion, his fist clenching on air. Sousuke watches almost fascinatedly as he reaches up the slightest bit to fit his lips over Rin’s still-trembling ones. Rin probably tastes like salt, but the enraptured look on Haruka’s face tells Sousuke that he doesn’t care the slightest bit. He kisses Rin, soft and slow and wet, with the kind of patience and finesse Sousuke wouldn’t have believed that he possessed, if he hadn’t seen it for himself. His eyes are closed and his eyelids flutter as he licks into Rin’s mouth.

There’s the slightest bit of envy lingering in his chest, but that really can’t be helped. He’s a lot more alright with his friend (he still has to get used to calling Haruka that) kissing the love of his life, than he’d ever imagined he’d be and that surprises him more than anything else. Surprises him, because he has no doubt about the depth of his love for Rin, his attraction to Rin, and Sousuke has never been comfortable with the possibility of Rin being taken away from him,  whisked away to places that he can’t follow.

But Haruka’s love for Rin is emanating from him in warm waves, and it washes over Sousuke and leaves him fraught with a deliriously happy warmth. It also makes his own desire for Rin, for Rin’s now-wet lips and his pinkened skin, grow.

When Haruka’s mouth moves one last time over Rin’s, and then parts from it with a slick sound, Rin follows him in a blind, instinctive movement. Sousuke cups his chin and gives him barely a few seconds to breathe before taking Rin’s lips between his own. He doesn’t taste salty from his tears anymore, Haruka’s kiss must have taken that away, but his mouth is hot and swollen and Sousuke tugs at his full bottom lip with his teeth, marveling at the soft little sound that arises from deep inside Rin’s throat.

Rin’s hand comes up to cup the side of his neck and his mouth parts just enough for Sousuke to slide his tongue between them and taste a strange mixture of what probably is Rin himself, Haruka and now Sousuke. His teeth are sharp, warm daggers and Sousuke is careful when he brushes his tongue over them. It’s intoxicating, and Sousuke licks into him, his eyes wide open and meeting Rin’s own slitted ones wonderingly.

When he draws away from Rin after what seems like an eternity and wipes at his mouth absently, Rin’s thumb lifts to his own mouth, feeling at the reddened, inflamed skin.

Haruka, his gaze still intent on Rin’s lips, makes a soft sound so full of desire and longing beside him at that, that Sousuke feels like he’s been hit in the gut. Haruka’s side is burning hot against his own and Sousuke is beginning to perspire through his hoodie from the combination of all three of their body heat and his own desire, pooling fast and hot in his belly.

“Nngh.” Rin breathes heavily, his lashes brushing up against his eyebrows and fluttering rapidly.

He leans in again, but stops, eyes darting indecisively up to Sousuke’s mouth first, and then back down to Haruka’s.

“Shit.” He says, still poised awkwardly, in the midst of leaning in, and Sousuke can’t help but snicker.

“Go on.” He tells Rin, and watches intently as he struggles between leaning in towards Haruka mouth and stretching up to Sousuke’s, before he sighs resignedly and lets his head fall back with a light thud against the door. His chest rises and falls with his quick breaths.

Haruka’s form tremors briefly beside him and Sousuke nudges up against him and sends him a questioning glance. Haruka takes a moment to rip his gaze away from where it’s fixed on Rin’s heaving chest, but he quirks a tiny smile at Sousuke.

“You alright?” He asks Sousuke, but Sousuke knows that it’s just perfunctory, because there’s just no way he could have missed the sheer relief and desire warring within Sousuke and warming his fingertips and toes. Just like Sousuke recognizes Haruka’s own contentment in the easy, loose fluidity of his limbs and his shining eyes.

Rin blinks his eyes open at the question though.

“I’m fine.” He mutters. But then realizes that Haruka’s turned towards Sousuke and not him and flushes to the roots of his hair. “I mean-“

Haruka starts smiling and Sousuke too, can’t help but revel at the sight of Rin’s indignant embarrassment.

“He wasn’t asking you, Rin-Rin.” Sousuke tells him, just to drink in the tips of his ears pinkening.

“Shut up, Sousuke! Don’t call me that.” Rin snaps indignantly, clearly a lot more aware of himself now. He levels a glare at Haruka. “And stop laughing, you idiot!”

He looks like he’s about to have a coronary from sheer embarrassment as Sousuke starts chortling in earnest, but then Haruka just leans in and kisses his neck wetly and Rin goes still from surprise. His head falls back again, and he makes a soft noise.

Sousuke takes it as invitation enough to stoop down and press his own face into the crook of Rin’s neck. He inhales the elusive scent of snow and the cologne (still the same one) that Rin religiously dabs on before he steps out.  When he licks at the hot skin curiously, Rin shudders and tries to turn away from the ticklish sensation, but Haruka’s face is buried on the other side of his neck so he just ends up squirming restlessly.

“Ah-“ Sousuke can feel the vibrations of Rin’s throat working on senseless little sounds as he nips down the line of it. He can also hear, with intense clarity, Haruka’s own lips working on Rin’s neck, so close to where his own mouth is moving. It’s strangely erotic, how the wet sounds of the kisses Haruka's sucking into Rin’s skin echo in Sousuke’s ears.

“Ah, H-haru, Sousuke, just-“ Rin groans and settles a palm on their chests before shoving at them with more force than he’d probably intended. Sousuke stumbles back a couple of steps mostly out of surprise, but Haruka, with his lean arms and slim form, isn’t that lucky.

He goes flying backward, arms pinwheeling and mouth in an ‘o’, landing right on his ass on the parquet floor. Sousuke, for some reason, finds this hilarious. As he regains his own footing, he kicks lightly at Haruka’s foot with his own, watching the shell-shocked look on his face fade, only to be replaced with irritation.

“Rin!” Haruka mutters admonishingly, as he slips his hand into Sousuke’s outstretched one and pulls himself back up, rubbing at his tailbone gingerly as he does.

Rin’s eyes are wide and apologetic, but one look at Sousuke’s tickled grin seems to settle him, and he smirks at Haruka and flexes his biceps smugly.

“Looks like you need to be doing a lot more reps, Haru.”

Haruka just raises a cool eyebrow at him, and Sousuke already knows what he’s about to say, because it’s exactly what he’s thinking. “You weren’t saying that just now, were you, Rin?”

Rin flusters and looks away, mouth compressing into an indignant line and Sousuke runs a teasing finger down the side of his face.

“What  _were_  you saying just now, Rin? I can’t quite remember.” He pretends to think, grinning when Rin bats his finger away irritatedly.

“He was saying ‘nghh’.” Haruka provides helpfully, and Sousuke starts snickering with renewed vigour.

“Shut the hell up!” Rin runs an agitated hand through his hair and shoots a baleful look at the both of them and Sousuke decides to give the guy a break.

“Fine, fine.” He placates, lifting his fingers to his lips in a zipping motion. “See, not saying anything.”

“Haruuu.” Haruka pipes in beside him after a moment of silence, in a frankly terrible imitation of Rin’s earlier cries. His eyes are deceptively blank, but Sousuke immediately recognizes the tiny gleam of mischief within them.

“S-Sousuke.” He continues, and Sousuke brings a fist up to his mouth to stifle his spontaneous bark of laughter, stepping back quickly as Rin makes violently to grab a hold of his and Haruka’s arms.

“Christ.” Rin mutters to himself, once Haruka slumps down onto the mattress and Sousuke swings a leg over the desk chair to straddle it backwards. “What am I going to do with the both of you?”

“Don’t answer that!” He snaps at them, just as Sousuke turns a glance to Haruka and the both of them start smirking a little. “Twelve year olds, I swear..”

Which is one hell of a statement coming from  _Rin_ , Sousuke thinks to himself.

But he stays silent, just rests his chin on the buttery leather of the back of the chair and takes in Rin’s rucked up hoodie and bitten-red lips appreciatively. When Rin pushes off from the door and gathers his hair into a ponytail by habit, that painfully fond, familiar feeling warms Sousuke’s chest.

Haruka stretches his hand out a little, from where he’s slumped on the bed and Rin sighs and makes his way over to the two of them, tangling his fingers with Haruka’s own and carding warm fingers through Sousuke’s hair, tousled from the beanie that Rin had pulled on earlier. Sousuke’s eyes droop closed from the comforting motion and the last thing he sees are Haruka’s own half-lidded ones, turned up to Rin’s face almost fascinatedly.

 

-

 

“Juice.”

“Water.”

“We didn’t come to a beach café to drink water, idiot.”

“I said I want a glass of water.” Haru shifts his glare from Sousuke to Rin stubbornly. “Chilled, please.” He tells the confused-looking waitress, cool as ever.

“Scratch that, miss. I’m so sorry for the trouble he’s causing. We’ll just have two tropical fruits and one mango.” Sousuke’s voice is smooth, but Rin has known him for far too long to not be able to pick out the hint of simmering irritation.

“ _Three waters_ , he meant.”

Rin just watches exasperatedly as Sousuke turns his chair to the side deliberately, the legs dragging loudly on the linoleum tiles.

“Why don’t you go take a dive into the ocean for that damn water, Nanase.”

“Suits me just fine, Yamazaki.”

Haru just pushes off his chair determinedly and grabs Sousuke by his bare upper arm.

“You can come with me, too.”

“Oi, oi, Harukaaa-!” Sousuke scrambles backward, trying to avoid getting pulled up and his chair knocks into the one of an older lady seated in the table behind them. When she turns around and fixes the three of them with a frigid glare, Rin decides that he’s seen enough.

“We’ll have one water and two tropical fruits, please. Less sugar.” He gets out between gritted teeth, and shoots the waitress the most apologetic smile he can muster up. She nods hesitantly, eyes still darting warily between a reluctantly amused Sousuke and a studiously blank-faced Haru.

Haru lets out a ‘tch’ of irritation and flicks Sousuke lightly on the arm before dropping back into his chair. When Sousuke kicks at his chair leg half-heartedly, he just rolls his eyes.

“I can’t take you two anywhere, can I?” It’s nothing out of the ordinary, but Rin’s feeling too relaxed and happy to give them a proper scolding. Neither one of them is listening to him anyway, and he resigns himself to a few more minutes of their pointless, light-hearted bickering.

“I know where you’ve stashed your freaky water magazines, Haruka.”

“I know where your diary is,  _Sousuke_.” Haruka’s eyes gleam triumphantly.

Rin starts a little.

“You have a diary? What the hell were you teasing  _me_ for then?” He puts forth indignantly, only to be completely ignored by the two of them.

“Hn. Let’s see who finds what first.”

“You’re on, water boy.”

Haru’s eyes are glittering determinedly and he leans forward to look Sousuke in the eye.

“Hm?”

“Hmm?” Sousuke braces his forearm on the table between them and leans in until his dark hair brushes against and blends in neatly with Haru’s.

“Hmmm!”

“Hmmmm..”

Rin just watches as a reluctant little smile starts tugging at Sousuke’s mouth first, and then Haru’s.

“You’re ridiculous.” Sousuke tells Haru, leaning back against his chair and intertwining his fingers with Rin’s own, where they’re resting on the table-top. Rin startles at the sudden burst of warmth, then grips him back after a cursory glance around the café. No one’s really looking at them.

“No, you.” Haruka retorts, but he kicks at Sousuke’s chair in a lethargic little motion and Rin just sighs again and throws an arm around his cool shoulders. The salt of the air and the heady warmth of the summer are making his eyes droop and his thoughts slow, but he welcomes it.

The winter of last year seems decades away when he tries to recollect it but he can’t help the pulses of warm contentment that resonate within his chest whenever warm fingers shift between his own and cool hair brushes against his cheek.

“Idiots.” He grumbles, eyes drifting closed, and the fingers squeeze his as if in reply. Haruka bites at his shoulder a tad resentfully.

“Who, you?” Sousuke asks. “Can’t argue with that.”

Haruka nods against him in agreement, his head bumping up against Rin’s own with the motion and Rin makes a tiny irritated noise at the back of his throat and closes his eyes, too lazy to muster up any real brand of vehemence.

“My idiots, though.” He admits under his breath, because they really are  _his_  and Rin’s heart is overfull with gratitude for this moment and the countless ones that’re bound to come.

Haru and Sousuke don’t reply; they like to pretend that they don’t hear some of the things Rin says, but Rin honestly knows better. Reticent and aloof at first glance they may be, the two of them are surprisingly attuned to Rin’s emotions (much more than their own at least, he thinks, half-exasperatedly and half-fondly).

He just smiles when he hears the drag of a chair on the tiles and then the warmth of a form pressing to his right side.

“Yeah.” Sousuke’s voice is close to his ear, too-close, and Rin shivers and then makes a wordless noise of agreement, shoulder thrumming with Haru’s drawn-out hum on his other side.

In a couple of days, he’ll have to get back to the biting coolness of the Australian winter and work off the ounces of sugar he’s been consuming over the past week; Haru and Sousuke will be back to their routine of push-and-pull in Tokyo (they still get all embarrassed and quiet when Rin tries to pick apart their odd friendship) but he can hardly bring himself to worry about that now.

He just turns land a wet kiss on the point of Sousuke’s chin first and then the other way to nuzzle into Haru’s cheek. When he cracks his eyes open just a smidgen, the grumpy lady in the seat behind them is giving Rin a scandalized look, eyes flitting between the loose-limbed forms of Haruka and Sousuke and then back to Rin. On a regular day, he’d have shot up from his chair, thrumming with not a little amount of panic, but today he’s too content to do anything but dismiss her with a small smile.

The ocean is calm and very blue when he looks out at it without a drop of worry for once, and strands of black hair flank his vision on either side.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday, my sweet baby :'D May you win all the gold medals and swim in all the sakura-pools! I'm sincerely sorry about this. But not really :c 
> 
> I've also been considering writing a short R-rated sequel to this, my depravity knows no bounds.


End file.
